FBI General Counsel: Constitution and Bill of Rights “Seriously Miss the Mark”

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Those who say the FBI should not collect information on a person or group unless there is a specific reason to suspect that the target is up to no good seriously miss the mark. The FBI has been told that we need to determine who poses a threat to the national security — not simply to investigate persons who have come onto our radar screen.

* The FBI has been conducting surveillance in the United States of persons and groups who are not suspected of committing or planning to commit any crime.

* This surveillance has been often covert and involves undercover infiltration of social milieux and organizations.

* FBI surveillance within the United States can be based on statements of political opinion people have made.

* FBI surveillance within the United States can be based on people’s religious affiliation.

* FBI surveillance within the United States can be based on people’s ethnic origin.

Confronted with documentation of the existence of this program, FBI general counsel Valerie Caprioni became especially anxious. What was she anxious about? Well, as you saw above, she was anxious to identify our Constitution, our Bill of Rights and those who ascribe to them as “seriously off the mark.” We’ve already established that. But Caprioni was also anxious that people would come to the conclusion that an FBI program dedicated to conducting covert surveillance of people and infiltration of groups not suspected of any crime might be thought of as “spying”:

I don’t like to think of us as a spy agency because that makes me really nervous. We don’t want to live in an environment where people in the United States think the government is spying on them. That’s an oppressive environment to live in and we don’t want to live that way.

The FBI’s General Counsel didn’t say that “we don’t want to live in an environment where the government is spying on people in the United States.”

The FBI’s General Counsel said that “we don’t want to live in an environment where people in the United States think the government is spying on them.”

The FBI is spying on American people and organizations — without warrants, without probable cause, without suspicion, covertly. But the FBI asks you, please, don’t think of it that way. It would be best for the FBI if you didn’t think of it at all.

About the authorJim Cook

I haven't been everywhere, but I've lived lots of places in the USA: the North, the South, the East, the West, and places in between. Every place I've been, I've seen acts large and small of kindness, callousness and disregard. Here we are. What will we do?

Hey, how about that – they actually took George Bush’s anti-Constitutional spying policies and CONTINUED and ENHANCED them since we voted for Obama and all his make-believe change! Ain’t life grand?

Get used to living in this fascist bankrupt country with its moral decay, an uninformed or “care-less” population, and its phony “elected government” (wow – there’s a laugh, hunh?) TOTALLY in the pocket of the Fed and Wall Street.

George Bush’s “anti-constitutional spying policy”… I wasn’t aware his power and reach infiltrated the Clinton Administration:

the Digital Telephony Act (the “Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act,” PL 103- 414, commonly known as the “National Wiretap Plan”) passed in 1995; the “Aviation Security and Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996″; and the Anti-Terrorism Law Enforcement Enhancement Act of 1996.”
and of course the The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, United States Congressional statement of policy calling for regime change in Iraq based on the intelligece provided to Bill Clinton by George Tenet who assured the US (and world) that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destrution and he would use them). Itwas signed into law by President Bill Clinton, and states that it is the policy of the United States to support democratic movements within Iraq. The Act was cited in October 2002 to argue for the authorization of military force against the Iraqi government. That darn Bush…

if they don’t want us thinking about it then, maybe, they should give up the drug-war and we’d all be so high they could pull of their world domination schemes and nobody would give a flying flitter #*>@! 🙂

It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection. These are the times when maps fade, old landmarks crumble and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.